Well, seeing as campusing is for recruitment, not for power, and is kinda meant to be targeting your contact strength campusing on jugs will do little compared to proper campusing.

Increased recruitment is part of power development, sungam.

Campusing should enhance power in the upper body.

Do I necessarily need a campus board with specific campus rungs or can I get away with just setting holds on a wall and campusing them? And are jugs OK to use for said training?

I want to start campusing for power training but my local gym does not have a campus board (or any training specific stuff for that matter) but it does have a section of wall at an acceptable angle for this type of training.

True, but campusing alone won't give the gains that proper power training will give when supplemented with campusing. It makes more sense (to me) to view them as two separate things that need training.

True, but campusing alone won't give the gains that proper power training will give when supplemented with campusing.

It makes more sense (to me) to view them as two separate things that need training.

Such as...bouldering and so forth?


What are two separate things? Power training and campusing? Power and recruitment? Power and recruitment are not separate. Although power does not train maximal recruitment the way pure strength does; it does especially improve recruitment speed, however.

Sure bouldering, 4x4s etc.
I suppose I wasn't really clear on what I meant, if I meant anything at all. I guess what I was trying to say is it's not necessarily (in my view) the best idea to have campussing as your main power training exercise. Firstly since I'm not sure anybody's elbows can handle that kind of treatment (not to mention the digits), but also because it's not a complete power workout - unless you're climbing at one of a very select few places you will rarely be pulling straight down on your holds and although I view contact strength as the main target for training for climbing core strength, including shoulder "stability" is important to make the most of said strength. I had another point about something, but I forgot it. Perhaps about the jugs thing or something.

I have to admit that it is really funny to see Magnus giving out training advice.

I'm pretty sure that campus boarding is the bread and butter of max recruitment training.

Between the gains made by training the nervous system to synchronize signals, and the inhibition of the negative feedback loop of the GTO, I can't think of something that has as much benefit for pure power as the campus board.

So.. what IS a good way to train for power? A mixture of bouldering and campusing, fingerboard workouts, what?

Also, what's max recruitment? Is there some good training info on the web you could point me to?

Inhibiting the GTO is unlikely to have any significant effect on force production. I believe that is dated theory.

What is the current theory on why plyometrics work so well? I looked around for a bit, but either found references to the GTO, or nothing at all on WHY plyometrics work. I did find an article on training for high jumpers, but it talked about force gains from disinhibition of the GTO being too minimal to explain the gains from plyometric training, but no replacement theory.

What is max recruitment?

So training for dynamic strength or power the best way absolutely is doing physically very hard moves very dynamicly. In practice just 1-2 moves per hand so you barely can catch the target.

I see injury potential here what do you think?

-from another point of view, since any real rock move is likely to present more of a technical challenge for most climbers, than a physical one, is it really necessary to see this in power/strenght terms?

The simplicity of campus training DOES create a shortcut, BUT the problem is the similarity of the usual campus hold. This creates problems in the repetitiviness, plateauing and injury issues.

As this is neural training one should use different hold types too to gain max strength more widely as the fact is the carryover from one hold type to another is quite poor.

So to make campusing much more efficient one should build a better board. In my book that would include at least:
- 2cm edges for openhands and ½-crimps
- big round slopers where your wrist bends a bit too
- big flat slopers
- pinches.

First of all, I really don't believe campusing is plyometric in nature. It is not proven that the amortization phase is short enough. Not to mention that campusing is not plyometric anyway unless you are dropping down from one rung to one below, then immediately springing back up to the one above. (But again, no definitive proof this particular exercise is actually plyometric either.) So, it's irrelevant.

But anyway, plyometrics work because of muscle spindles--they cause the stretch-shortening cycle to occur if the time is short enough between eccentric and concentric contractions. Maybe plyo's alter the GTO threshold of activation to maximize the muscle spindle action but I don't think this is clear.

lena chita: yes. very much so. kind of hybrid board where you can campus and do system probs too.

the gains and transfer effect to real rock will be much better. absolutely.